Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Isaiah 12:2-6 December 13, 2009

Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

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Over the years, I have tried, a few times, to preach about laughter. It always seems like such a good idea. Christianity can be so dour sometimes. Nearly everybody knows that the shortest verse in the bible is, "Jesus wept." Almost all of the pictures people have created to portray Jesus have been serious and dark, reflecting the pain and suffering he endured. Sometimes it just gets to be a bit much, and preaching about something light feels like it ought to provide a good balance. However, every time I've tried to preach about laughter I've fallen flat on my face. What I've found is that there are few things less humorous than a sermon about humor. Something is usually lost between the theory and the practice.

Today, the third Sunday of Advent, is a day traditionally set aside for the theme of joy. Hope, Peace, Joy and Love are the four traditional themes of the Advent Sundays. I don't always follow these themes at this time of year, but after two Sundays of talking about the darkness and longing of the ancient prophesies, Jeremiah and Malachi, I imagine a little joy would be a welcome change. We have to be careful though. It's entirely possible to do the same thing with Joy that so often happens with laughter. Just as a sermon about humor won't necessarily be funny, there's no guarantee that a sermon about joy will necessarily be joyful.

A couple of weeks ago Nancy Gibbs wrote an essay for Time Magazine called, "The Gospel of Glee." (Time, 12/7/09, page 112) Glee, apparently, is a relatively new TV series about a high school glee club. I haven't seen it, and having read Gibbs' article, I don't feel any need to. She describes it as a sharp, sarcastic comedy in which, "Nearly all the Ten Commandments get violated at one point or another, while the audience is invited to laugh at people's pain and folly and humiliation." Honestly, that kind of humor has worn thin on me.

What I found most interesting though, was a letter to the editor that appeared two weeks later from a man responding to Gibb's article. It said, "I'd argue that there's more to be gained from a single episode of Glee than from a year of dry sermons from a joyless preacher." What an interesting comment. It certainly paints an unfortunate picture of the kind of church experience he's had. Let's see. On the one hand, a single episode of Glee. On the other a full year of dry sermons from a joyless preacher. Personally, I would hope there might be a third option.

Sadly though, the impression that church people are joyless, especially preachers, isn't as uncommon as it ought to be. Practicing our faith in a joyless way is something that is easy to slip into and not all that easy to get out of. There's a story I like about a conference that once took place at a Presbyterian church in Omaha. People were given helium filled balloons and told to release them at some point during a worship service when they felt like expressing the joy in their hearts. The story says that "since they were Presbyterians, they weren't free to call out 'Hallelujah' or "Praise the Lord," but they could, with some decorum, release the string of a balloon. All through the service balloons ascended to the rafters a few at a time, but when it was over fully one third of the balloons had not been released.

What do you make of that? We probably shouldn't jump to conclusions. I don't want to automatically assume that a good third of the congregation was trying to say they had no joy in their hearts at all, or none during the service anyway. Some people just don't respond well to audience participation, of any kind. I know because I'm usually one of them. The fact is though, joy is something that seems like it ought to be a lot more common than it is, in the lives of Christians at least.

The novelist Leon Bloy once said, "Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God." I find it hard to argue with that. I've had a few experiences I would describe that way; being in God's presence, knowing that the Spirit of God was real and right near by, knowing that, in some unfathomable way, that Spirit loved and accepted me just exactly as I am. These have been some of the most breath-taking experiences of my life. They have given vitality to my ministry, and they continually remind me of what it is I'm trying to accomplish. At the time though, in any one of these experiences, I'm not sure I would say the dominant feeling was joy. It's been more of an overwhelming mixture of emotions. But joy is definitely the residue left behind. Joy, I've come to believe, is what bubbles to the surface when we suddenly realize that God is real. There is nothing to fear, and there never will be. As a plaque on a wall at the Mayo Clinic puts it, "Joy is the echo of God's life in us."

That's not to say we run around feeling joyful all the time. Like all feelings, joy comes and goes. It waxes and wanes. But, in the life of faith, joy is more than simply a feeling. It is an underlying confidence that no matter how bad things may seem at times, as Paul put it, "nothing can separate us from the love of God." I especially like the way David Standl-Rast talks about joy.

Ordinary happiness, he says, depends on happenstance. Joy is that extraordinary happiness that is independent of what happens to us. Good luck can make us happy, but it cannot give us lasting joy. The root of joy is gratefulness. We tend to misunderstand the link between joy and gratefulness. We notice that joyful people are grateful and suppose that they are grateful for their joy. But the reverse is true: their joy springs from gratefulness. If one has all the good luck in the world, but takes it for granted, it will not give one joy. Yet even bad luck will give joy to those who manage to be grateful for it. We hold the key to lasting happiness in our own hands. For it is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.

That's the kind of joyful gratitude Isaiah was expressing in this morning's passage. "Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation." Eugene Peterson has written a wonderful translation of this same passage. "Sing praise-songs to God," he writes. "Raise the roof! Sing your hearts out, O Zion! The Greatest lives among you: The Holy [One] of Israel." That's the spirit; joyful gratitude. That's the same spirit expressed by the composer Franz Josef Haydn. "When I think upon my God," he once said, "my heart is so full of joy that the notes dance and leap from my pen; and since God has given me a cheerful heart, it will be pardoned me that I serve Him with a cheerful spirit."

Surely God is my salvation. I will trust. I will not be afraid. I don't know how you feel about the word "salvation." It usually reminds me of a theology I'm not very comfortable with, so I don't tend to use the word very often. But I do very much feel saved by God. Not from hell or eternal damnation, but from fear, from anxiety, from hopeless, from meaninglessness. I love what the AA groups say about fear. They say it stands for: Forgetting Everything's All Right." That's what I believe. In God, everything is all right. Everything does turn out for the best. The world is a mess. No question about it. There is way too much pain and suffering, ignorance and injustice. And yet, in some unimaginable way, it is all part of a larger picture in which everything fits together and makes sense. I don't know what that larger picture is. Knowing the larger picture isn't my job. My job is to trust, to have faith, to put aside fear. In God, everything is all right. My job is to not forget it.

Joy isn't something we have to manufacture. We couldn't even if we wanted to. Joy is something that bubbles to the surface in us when we are able, through grace, to get our fears, our doubts and our anxieties out of the way. And when that happens, joy all by itself, naturally becomes a deep and abiding part of our Christian life together. To live in faith is not to pretend that the world doesn't have problems. It is rather to live with a sense of confidence that those problems, as crazy as they are, are somehow under the control of grace.

In closing, I'd like to share some words from the third century that come from a man who was close to dying. His last words to a friend were written down and preserved. "It's a bad world," he said, "an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and holy people who have learned a great secret. They have found a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of our sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people are the Christians--and I am one of them."

(Today In The Word, June, 1988, p. 18.)

May your Christmas season be filled with the joy of faith.

Amen.